Puerto Rico’s Drug Problem Needs Federal Attention: View

Feb. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Puerto Rico has 3.7 million
residents, a storied capital, more than 300 miles of stunning
coastline, an average temperature of 80 degrees Fahrenheit --
and, in 2011, a homicide rate more than five times that of the
mainland U.S. and higher than that of Mexico.

It badly needs federal help to curb this drug-fueled
violence. But so far, the U.S. government is treating Puerto
Ricans as if they were second-class citizens.

Geography is partly to blame for Puerto Rico’s plight. If
Mexico had the misfortune to be, in the late Mexican dictator
Porfirio Diaz’s words, “so far from God, so close to the United
States,” Puerto Rico’s bad luck is to be so close to South
America and to the southern U.S. It is an ideal transshipment
point for illegal narcotics in the Americas. And with open ocean
between it and Africa and Europe, it’s a good point of departure
for illicit shipments to those two continents.

As the U.S. and Mexico have cracked down on the drug trade,
traffic has shifted to the Caribbean. The National Drug
Intelligence Center reports that cocaine seizures along sea
routes between Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands more than
tripled between 2009 and 2010. Plenty of the stuff is still
getting through: The price of cocaine in the area dropped by
roughly one-third between 2008 and 2010, suggesting there is no
lack of supply. Upward of 80 percent of what arrives by plane or
boat goes on to the eastern United States. From 2010 to 2011,
seizures of illegal cash by customs agents rose by 68 percent;
seizures of such money by the Drug Enforcement Agency more than
doubled.

Other factors have helped to fuel the trade. Puerto Rico’s
economy has done poorly since even before the recession, making
the gains of the drug trade, and the solace that its products
offer, even more attractive. The island’s unemployment rate of
14.7 percent and poverty rate of 45 percent are higher than
those of any U.S. state. Moreover, Puerto Rico’s 17,000-member
police force, the second largest in the U.S. after that of New
York City, has been roiled by charges of civil rights violations
and corruption. In October 2010, the Federal Bureau of
Investigation arrested 61 officers after the largest police
corruption investigation in the agency’s history.

Ironically, the spike in violence was triggered by the
arrests in 2009 and 2010 of two of the island’s leading drug
lords -- arrests that set off a bloody turf war. More than half
of the 1,117 homicides in 2011 -- that’s about one person killed
every eight hours or so -- are believed to have been drug-related. “If we were talking about Jacksonville,” said
Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida at a hearing in
December, “people would be screaming.”

Many Puerto Ricans have been screaming. Washington needs to
listen and respond. Currently, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin
Islands together receive less than $100 million a year in direct
federal funding for anti-drug efforts.

That’s a small fraction of the $2 billion-plus that the
U.S. government has dedicated to fighting drug trafficking on
the U.S. border with Mexico. Right now, for example, the Coast
Guard has no fixed-wing surveillance aircraft stationed in
Puerto Rico, nor does it have the ability to simultaneously
patrol Puerto Rico’s east and west coasts. Although the DEA and
Customs and Border Protection have increased their staffing,
they are not yet equipped to tackle challenges like
significantly expanding inspections of container traffic to and
from San Juan, the fifth busiest port on the U.S. eastern
seaboard.

The Caribbean Border Initiative proposed by Pedro
Pierluisi, Puerto Rico’s non-voting representative to Congress,
seeks to replicate the Southwest Border Initiative that the
Obama administration introduced in 2009, increasing resources
for multiple agencies and promoting a more integrated approach.
We hope that the Office of National Drug Control Policy will
support it, not least for the positive signal that it will send
to Puerto Rico’s residents.

Public confidence would also benefit if the federal
government, through a consent decree and a court-appointed
monitor, took a strong role in the reform of Puerto Rico’s
police department.

Finally, to fight money laundering and promote development,
the island’s government should do more to encourage its
residents to use banks. Despite efforts to get people to use
direct deposit for paychecks and create individual development
accounts that match savers’ deposits, a third or more of Puerto
Rico’s population is “unbanked,” versus 7.7 percent in the rest
of the U.S. Their cash-only transactions help to enable the
island’s burgeoning black economy.

On the margins of the margins, the poorest Puerto Ricans
are the ones who bear the brunt of drug violence. They deserve
the fullest protections the U.S. can provide.